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Listed below are biographical sketches and links to some of the best known figures associated with the history of social psychology. For additional biographies (of contemporary as well as historic figures), see:

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Allport, Floyd Henry

1890 - 1978

Floyd Allport is considered a founder of experimental social psychology, in part for his theoretical rigor and emphasis on measurement, and in part for his popular 1924 textbook Social Psychology, which went through 13 editions over the ensuing 50 years.

Gordon Allport, younger brother of Floyd Allport, conducted pioneering research on attitudes, prejudice, religion, and rumor transmission, among other topics. In addition to training prominent psychologists such as Stanley Milgram, Thomas Pettigrew, Jerome Bruner, and Anthony Greenwald, he helped establish the field of personality psychology.

Solomon Asch is best known for laboratory studies on conformity showing that under certain circumstances, a large percentage of people will conform to a majority position even when the position is clearly incorrect. He also published seminal studies on the primacy effect and halo effect, and helped inspire Stanley Milgram's research on obedience to authority.

Roger Brown wrote the acclaimed 1965 textbook Social Psychology, which played a central role in training a generation of social psychologists. He also made important contributions in psycholinguistics and cognitive psychology, studying topics such as language acquisition, flashbulb memories, and the tip of the tongue phenomenon.

Donald T. Campbell was a social psychologist and research methodologist who coauthored some of the most frequently cited methodology books and articles ever published. In addition to this work, he served as President of the American Psychological Association and contributed to several fields beyond psychology, including sociology, anthropology, biology, and philosophy.

Kenneth Clark and his wife Mamie conducted research suggesting that Black children preferred to play with White dolls, a result that the U.S. Supreme Court later cited as evidence that segregation "generates a feeling of inferiority... that may affect the childrens' hearts and minds." He was also the first African American to be elected President of the American Psychological Association.

Mamie Clark completed a masters thesis that provided the foundation for studies she and her husband Kenneth published on the harmful effects of racial segregation. The U.S. Supreme Court cited these studies in Brown v. Board of Education, a landmark case banning racial segregation in public education.

Leon Festinger developed the theory of cognitive dissonance, a motivational theory suggesting that people seek to minimize discomfort caused by inconsistent beliefs and behaviors. He also developed social comparison theory, devised several of the earliest nonparametric statistical tests, and documented the key role of proximity in social relationships.

Fritz Heider was an Austrian-born Gestalt psychologist whose work helped give rise to the field of social cognition. His best known book, The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations, was published in 1958 and was highly influential in the development of attribution theory.

Evelyn Hooker was the first social scientist to study the psychosocial adjustment of gay men outside hospital or prison settings. Her results showed no difference between gay and heterosexual men, challenging antigay stereotypes and eventually leading the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from its diagnostic manual of mental disorders.

Carl Hovland conducted pathbreaking research on attitude change, propaganda, and persuasion, including studies of the sleeper effect, source credibility, two-sided persuasive appeals, and contrast effects. Later in his career, he also investigated symbolic processes and computer simulations of human thought.

Irving Janis carried out studies on attitude change, stress, and decision making, but his best known research was on groupthink, which he defined as "a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members' strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action."

Gustave Le Bon was a French social scientist who wrote about the psychology of crowds and the "collective mind," which he described as a "single being" more primitive and suggestible than the individuals who comprise it. His views on crowd behavior and inherited racial characteristics helped lay the foundation for fascist ideologies later promulgated by Hitler.

Kurt Lewin was an early leader of group dynamic research and is regarded by many as the founder of modern social psychology. Lewin's Equation, B=f(P,E), stipulates that behavior is a function of the person and environment, and he advocated "action research" applying this equation and scientific methods to address social problems such as prejudice and group conflict.

William McDougall cofounded the British Psychological Society in 1901 and published one of the first social psychology textbooks, An Introduction to Social Psychology (1908). He opposed behaviorism, believing instead that human behavior could be explained by instincts, and was controversial for his views on eugenics and inherited racial differences.

Stanley Milgram is famous for a set of studies suggesting that most people will obey an experimenter's order to administer potentially deadly levels of electric shock to a protesting stranger. He also invented several research techniques unrelated to obedience, such as the lost-letter technique, cyranoid technique, and small-world ("six degrees of separation") technique.

Maximilien Ringelmann was a French agricultural engineer who, in the 1880s, conducted some of the first experiments in social psychology. These experiments showed that individual members of a group often become less productive as the size of their group increases -- a phenomenon referred to as the "Ringelmann effect" and now better known as social loafing.

Stanley Schachter became well known in the 1950s for developing the "two-factor theory of emotion," which posits that emotions are a joint result of physiological arousal and a cognitive interpretation of that arousal. He also researched a wide range of other phenomena, including cognitive dissonance, misattribution, overeating, and addiction.

Carolyn Wood Sherif and her husband, Muzafer Sherif, conducted the "Robber's Cave" experiment (see below) and worked with Carl Hovland to develop social judgment theory, an influential theory about how and when attitude change takes place. She also studied gender identity, social values, and group dynamics, and served as President of the Society for the Psychology of Women.

Muzafer Sherif was a Turkish-born social psychologist who, with his wife Carolyn, conducted the Robber's Cave experiment in which boys at a summer camp were divided into two rivil groups and ultimately overcame fierce intergroup hostility after working toward superordinate goals. He also studied norm formation, attitude change, and many other topics.

Francis Cecil Sumner was the first African American to receive a Ph.D. in psychology, which he earned from Clark University in 1920. He was an official abstractor for Psychological Bulletin and the Journal of Social Psychology, established an independent psychology program at Howard University, and is widely credited as founding the field of Black psychology.

Henri Tajfel devised the "minimal group paradigm" in which intergroup relations are studied after arbitrarily dividing experimental participants into groups on the basis of minimally important characteristics. Consistent with social identity theory (co-developed with his student John Turner), he documented that even minimal groups readily form identities and exhibit ingroup favoritism.

Norman Triplett published one of the first experiments related to social psychology. The report, appearing in the American Journal of Psychology in 1898, compared how fast children wound a reel when alone and in competiton with another child. He concluded that the presence of another contestant "serves to liberate latent energy not ordinarily available."